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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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1. Nim's Island 2. The Life Before Her Eyes 3. Horton Hears a Who! 4. Leatherheads 5. The Spiderwick Chronicles | . | . |
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1. Varèse Sarabande 25th 2. The Last of the Mohicans 3. Legends of the Fall 4. Schindler's List 5. LOTR: Return of the King (Set) |
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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
For a more militaristic story, Elfman's score relies much more heavily on bombastic percussion and brass, rather than the exotic route of creating a foreign sound for the socially inversed planet. The expectations had been that Elfman would take the former route, producing a mysterious piece with exceedingly bizarre instrumentation. Interestingly, his score is built upon rhythms rather than instrumentation. He establishes motifs for three general areas of the film. First, an all-encompassing Ape Suite, function more like a main theme than the title sequence itself. Two such suites exist on the album, presenting many of its highlights. Second, the hunting scenes during which the apes are chasing and rounding up the humans are among the most primitively scored, with gut-wrenching ferociousness and unrelenting timpani. The third rhythmic portion of the score is that which accompanies battle scenes futher into the film, and these are the ones that present some of the most articulated themes of the score. Themes come at a premium in this series of films, and no resemblence of Elfman's masterful thematic composition talents can be heard without some substantial digging. Rather than forward sounding themes, Elfman constantly repeates the same three, four, and five note brass motifs throughout the score. Even the tender moments of character reflection are handled with a minimalistic approach. The highlights of the score are easily those which lay off the pounding drums and cyclical brass motifs. The space launching scene is delicately scored with an appropriate level of wonderment and foreshadowing. The first Ape Suite track finishes with a strong, haunting performance of woodwinds, an the seventh track, first establishing the "legend" of the story holds the only glimpse of heroic neatness in the score, utilizing a light choir for added color. The ninth and thirteenth tracks offer the final reflective, mellow, and very enjoyable rests from the action cues. And as for those nearly constant action cues, they can be described in two different ways, depending on the kind of Elfman fan you are, as well as your tolerance for straight bombast without obvious theme. To the Elfman fan, the mass of Planet of the Apes will be described as "challengingly complex." The "complex" part should get no argument from anyone. This is an extremely layered and sophisticated composition. As for "challenging," well, that can easily be countered with the word "noisy." If nothing else, even Elfman's greatest critics must recognize that he has created a sheer amount of noise for Planet of the Apes that overshadows any other score of the year so far, including Elliot Goldenthal's Final Fantasy. For non-Elfman followers, the score, while likely very effective in the film, is a headache waiting to happen on CD. The viewpoint that the Planet of the Apes album is not much more than drum beating monotony at high volumes is fine, as long as it is also recognized that the music is impressively contructed at its root. The only totally unlistenable track is the Paul Oakenfold remix at the end, with warped dialogue and unnecessary electronic droning. In regards to listenability, the Goldsmith and Elfman scores will be equally divisive on album. Elfman's work for the film is not entirely pleasant, outside of the reflective moments described above. But it doesn't have to be pleasant in order to impress, which Elfman's Planet of the Apes does moreso than Goldsmith's original (and it certainly overshadows the questionable sequel scores spinning off of that original). There are several places in Elfman's score where, for only a matter of seconds, the music ceases its churning percussion and actually hits a note of harmony. This apparently isn't enough for some executives at FOX, who, even after Elfman's music was pressed on CD, have reportedly demanded more "heroic" cues for certain scenes in the film (while the label refutes this, it is more likely that the executives backed off before making an issue out of it). The post-production schedule for the Tim Burton 2001 Planet of the Apes has been anything but timely, and it is still uncertain to what extent, beyond Elfman's denials, the score was rearranged to accomodate the executive ears who saw how many albums of Gladiator were sold and wanted something similar. The sound quality of Elfman's music, even though he added extra players to the brass and drum sections and recorded it in the spacious Newman Scoring Stage at Fox, does not resound well in surround sound. When considering this rather overdone dampening of the sound, in addition to Elfman's mass of questionably listenable action cues for mainstream ears, it is safe to say that the far better sci-fi action score of the summer is Goldenthal's Final Fantasy. Even if you cannot tolerate five minutes of Elfman's score on album, though, you simply have to marvel at the complexity of his barbarian bombast. ***
Insert offers no information about the film or score. An official website for the album has been set up by Sony at: www.planetoftheapesmusic.com. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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